The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to the use of precision time protocol (PTP) with cellular networks.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, or a New Radio (NR) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access network nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
Local communication networks may include industrial machines, automated functions, and the like, which rely on PTP (or similar techniques) to ensure that the machines are synchronized for operations. PTP may be implemented in such systems over an Ethernet network to synchronize the operations and movements of the machines. Implementation of PTP may include dedicated hardware support for deterministic delay calculations (e.g., estimation of the round-trip delay of packets in the local communication network using an Ethernet switch, etc.). Such systems, however, do not conventionally rely on wireless communication systems.